The National Weather Service has made it official: The last vestige of drought in our soggy state is gone.

For the first time in over a year, not a single place in New Hampshire is in any state of drought or even “abnormally dry,” the lowest category on the official drought scale. 

Our drought designation began last spring when rains held off. The drought spread during the extremely dry summer and fall, eventually covering the entire state. But the rains that began in early April, now totaling more than a foot in some places, have made the difference, and the latest weekly designation from the National Weather Service shows the state as completely drought-free.

Drought designation is not just a measure of recent precipitation but of other factors as well. It also measures both short-term effects on plants and long-term effects on groundwater supplies.